


The Cousin Who Lived: A Memoir

by iamlordmoldyshorts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:03:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamlordmoldyshorts/pseuds/iamlordmoldyshorts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Harry Potter series as narrated by Dudley Dursley. Told in summers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1980-1991

**Author's Note:**

> My oldest passion is Harry Potter. I haven't delved into the fandom before this because I was worried that I wouldn't do it justice. However! I was in a Young Adult Literature class a year ago at my college and I had a creative assignment that gave me the freedom to do whatever the hell I so choose with any of the books we have read so far.
> 
> I chose to do a character analysis, of sorts, to show the progression of Dudley as he grows up. It will be told in summers, each summer taking up one chapter.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, and if not, PLEASE let me know why. (After all, the Prof didn't like it...)
> 
> Also! I did fabricate one or two things in order to fill in the blanks...so if it doesn't sound familiar, that would be because I made it up.

**Message from the Author:**

My name is Dudley Dursley and for the first 17 years of my life I lived with my cousin, Harry Potter. The summer I turned 18, I made my way back home after a long stint in hiding. Walking through my house again for the first time in a year, I came across a stack of newspapers in Harry’s room. It was then that I sat down and learned the story of The-Boy-Who-Lived.  
Fifteen years later, almost to the day, I decided to sit down and chronicle my life as told in the summers I spent with Harry.  
I’m not looking for redemption. I’m not looking to get famous. I’m just looking for a willing reader to hear my story.  
I hope you enjoy it, 

Dudley Dursley

* * *

Early on in life I discovered that if I screamed, I got pretty much anything I wanted. A new toy at the supermarket, an ice lolly from a street vendor; I just had to utilize the waterworks and gifts streamed my way. I guess that made my life pretty easy until I turned fifteen. But I guess I should start from the beginning.

There was always one thing that crying wouldn’t fix. My parents simply wouldn’t get rid of Harry. In hindsight, this was a good thing, but I just couldn’t understand that if I hated Harry…and my parents hated Harry…why did he live with us? I guess for that reason alone I tormented him daily – without fail – for ten years. My family made his life a living hell.

When he first showed up on our front porch, I couldn’t understand who this intruder was. Nothing he did was right in my parents’ eyes, so why should I have to be nice to him? That was my mindset from the get-go.

Certain incidents regarding Harry stand out in my memory. At my fifth birthday party, Harry was beating me at musical statues and Aunt Marge hit him with a walking stick so that he’d lose. Then, there was the Christmas that Harry received dog biscuits as a gift. As time progressed, these things started to seem normal. There was one time that stands out in my memory as quite strange. Mum, Harry, and I were shopping when a random stranger walked up to us in the street. He gaped and then bowed to Harry. Mum hurried us away, but the confusion was there. For my seventh birthday, my parents decided that I was a “big boy” and took me and thirty of my “closest friends” to go see _The Brave Little Toaster_ at the local cinema. I specifically recall asking them what they’d do with Harry and they said that they’d “take care of him.” I didn’t see him for a day. It was from there-on-in that I irrevocably knew he was supposed to be under dirt in my list of things to despise.

Nothing changed in the following four years. I could still turn on the waterworks and get whatever I wanted, Harry was still dirt, and life went on. And then came the July of 1991.

I remember the morning well. It was the first time I’d ever seen fear in my dad’s eyes. Harry received a mysterious letter. I tried to grab it but he threw Harry and me out of the kitchen before I could. Stunned, I wrestled Harry for the optimal viewing means at the door. We both tried to listen but didn’t really understand what was going on. Hearing my parents walking towards the door had us scrambling to get away from it. I promptly put the ordeal out of my mind. That night though, I threw a hissy fit of epic proportions. Why did Harry get to have my second room? I hit, I screamed, I cried, and I didn’t get my way. I went into shock, finally acknowledging to myself that something had my parents spooked.

The rest of the month read like something from a bad cartoon you catch on the telly on Saturday mornings. Whoever the mysterious letter writer was, they weren’t giving up. These things showed up everywhere. Harry kept trying to get a copy, I kept trying to get a copy, and dad kept trying to stop us. We moved around a lot during that month. It was all a blur. I was really mad at my father for making me leave most of my prized possessions at home while we traveled, but it didn’t make a difference. He went nuts trying to avoid the letters.

We finally ended up on a rock in the middle of the sea. Thinking this was the end of all the madness, we all went to bed hungry but I was slightly mollified that I got the couch while Harry was relegated to the floor. I was promptly awoken by someone banging in the door. Not just any someone, a giant. Terrified, I ran and hid behind my parents. I watched through my mom’s arm while Harry was told he was a wizard. I watched him receive a cake for his birthday and my stomach rumbled. I listened as my pathetic cousin learned he was famous in a world that wasn’t supposed to exist. My father kept trying to drown the giant out but apparently the giant got really angry cause in the blink of an eye he was pointing a big pink umbrella at me and I was hit by a violet light. The next thing I knew I had a pig tail and I was squealing. I ran into the bedroom and holed up in there until the giant left, taking Harry with him.

I didn’t sleep that night. I kept trying to figure out what was going on with my bum. I was confused as to how this extra appendage was going to affect my daily routine; going to the bathroom, wearing clothes, etc. I poked my head out of the room to find Harry and the giant gone. I went to wake up my mum to let her know the hut was empty and she woke up dad. We all walked outside to discover that our boat was gone. Dad blew a gasket after that. We had to wait for the old toothless hut owner to figure out that we were stranded. A day later, we found our way back to the house and Harry showed up at the front door. Dad reluctantly let him in, getting by with the knowledge that in a month, Harry would be gone for the school year.

I avoided him for the next month. Fear of the unknown kept me at bay. He might have used his magic to turn me into a toad and then where would I be? Every time he walked into a room, I high-tailed it out of there and found somewhere else to be.

The day that Harry left, I ended up in a London hospital trying to get my pig tail removed in time for school. With the surgery a success, I went back home to prepare for my first year at Smeltings.


	2. The Second Summer

My first summer out of Smeltings and it was back to Privet Drive. With my arrival, however, brought Harry's too. With the noise level increasing in our house, dad yelling at Harry was nothing new. I remember one particular day where I woke up and went downstairs and, as per usual, dad was yelling at Harry over breakfast. You'd think the boy would learn but Harry just kept going on about his bird. The shouting was escalating in volume so in order to get my point across I burped…loudly. I grinned and asked for more food to diffuse the tense situation at the table. Crisis averted, I went back to eating. Then Harry had to go and be stupid. Looking back, I have to wonder if he tried to make my dad angry on purpose. I tuned out the screams and finished my breakfast.

A bit later my dad had started going on about his important business deal and we went over our parts for the evening. Dad's boss and his wife had plans to come over for dinner so we had to be prepared for their arrival. Dad kept blasting Harry, reminding him of his place in the household. I remember grinning and walking off to watch the telly. I'm only willing to listen to the same argument twice. No matter how pleasing it was to hear dad yelling at Harry, the same speech got annoying after a while.

When my show was over I went outside to go torment Harry. I had realized that it was his birthday and that he hadn't received any presents. I shouldn't have bugged him about it…should have known something was up, but even I'll admit; growing up, I wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the crayon box. I found him and started poking fun at the fact that no one had sent him any letters or gifts but he started using his magic on me, so I ran back into the house screaming for my mum. Hiding behind her, I watched as she gave Harry a bunch of chores for the day. Served him right, scaring me like that. I thought he could use magic to get them done though, so it wasn't that big of a deal, right? I lazed around the house waiting for the Mason's to arrive to give dad his promotion. I had to mentally prepare myself to suck up. I hadn't really ever done that before.

The night turned out to be a disaster. Harry dumped pudding on Mrs. Mason and then a bird flew through the window and dropped a letter on her head. She freaked out and ran out of the house screaming. Dad locked Harry in his room after that. He put bars on the windows, more locks on the doors, and only let him out to go to the bathroom. I knew something was wrong with it, but knew that there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I just let it lie.

Three days later, I woke up to my dad screaming. Since nothing was new, I stayed in bed. I then heard something to the tune of, "He's getting away." I jumped out of bed and ran to Harry's room to find him flying off into the distance in the back of what looked like a car. Dumbstruck, I was rushed back into my room by my mum and I went back to bed. It would be another year before I saw Harry again.


	3. The Third Summer

When I came back from my second year at Smeltings, my dad kept going on about his new promotion at work and what it entailed. I think I rolled my eyes a lot that week.

We went to go pick up Harry from Kings Cross Station and brought him back to the house. First step in the door and dad took his school stuff and stuffed it in Harry's old room under the stairs. Of course, that set off another argument. I listened eagerly to figure out how to best make Harry angry, since dad was such an expert at it. After all, he wasn't allowed to use magic on us over the holidays so there was no fear of retaliation if I set him off. Harry was sent to his room following the argument. For a week, life at my house went on peacefully…well, as peacefully as it had ever been with two adults and two children in the house. Finally, dad's new company car arrived. We were so happy that we stood outside for a long time just talking about it and looking at it.

About mid-summer, my parents and I were engaging in our normal morning ritual of watching the news while eating breakfast when dad released upon us some news of his own. Aunt Marge had deigned to come visit us. I tuned in to my dad berating Harry and telling him his limitations for the week she would be staying with us. With Harry smarting off to my dad like he was, I didn't understand why my dad wasn't screaming. Later in life I learned that there are some battles that just aren't meant to be fought. They simply aren't important enough. Either way, time flew by and mum was suddenly stuffing a fancy bowtie around my neck and calling me to the entry way to great my aunt.

Aunt Marge is a large woman who breeds bulldogs. Being related to my dad wasn't good to her. She was never nice, but she gave me money whenever she visited, so I liked her a lot. She did, however, compare me with Harry a lot. It boosted my ego, sure…but some of the stuff she said, while seemingly good at the time, didn't make me out to be the best person.

Later on that week, Aunt Marge broke a glass while she was yelling at Harry. Since this is a normal occurrence when my dad yelled at Harry, I didn't think much of it. However, when she started expanding to double her size (which was pretty large to begin with), I figured out something wasn't right. I looked over as Harry ran out of the kitchen and then watched as my mother and father tried to pull Aunt Marge (who was slowly starting to float away) down.

My dad confronted Harry to get him to turn my aunt back to normal but all I heard was some yelling, spluttering, and then my dad came back into the kitchen with his face as purple as a plum. With Harry gone, I had hoped that dad would cool down a bit. Unfortunately, a bunch of wizards showed up to deflate my aunt and set my dad off again. I believe he kicked them out of the house, but I was hurried into my bedroom by my mum at the time, so it's only speculation. Either way, Harry was gone for the summer.


	4. The Fourth Summer

When I got home from my third year at Smeltings, things had changed a bit around home. Apparently the nurse from school had called my mum and informed her that I was growing too large for the school uniforms. So from there-on-in, I (and the rest of the family) was on a diet. I didn't get my favorite foods anymore. Instead, I was forced to eat what my dad coined "rabbit food". I made it through the summer by smuggling donuts into my bedroom. Unfortunately, I was eventually found out. At the time, I was convinced that Harry had snitched me out, which truly makes no sense now. But I was positive that Harry had done it. I got so angry that I tossed my PlayStation out of my second floor window. Since that didn't change anything and I was still being forced to abide by the diet, I slowly came to the realization that whining and throwing a fit didn't get me everything that I wanted in life. I state it now plain as day, but this understanding took me the latter part of the summer to work out. I reached the conclusion that if I wanted something, I'd have to fight for it. I like to think that I grew as a person that summer…even if I did take it in the wrong direction over the course of the next school year…but moving on.

Harry had received post again, but only one letter this time instead of thousands. I tried to snoop and find out what my dad and Harry were talking about, but couldn't hear anything. Finally, Harry came barreling out of the living room with a huge grin on his face. Confusion lingered for about a day until I discovered that Harry was to be picked up in the near future by a bunch of his friends and that he'd be gone for the rest of the summer. I perked up at hearing this, thinking that I'd get to eat his food portion. The mood in the house was tense and I was terrified as we waited for the wizards to arrive.

And arrive they did, in force. In true not-normal style, four men with red hair literally exploded out of the fireplace. Scared stiff, my family said nothing as Harry gathered his things and packed to go. One of the boys dropped a bag of sweets and my stomach growled. I bent to the ground and crawled over to one that he had missed in his scramble to pick them all back up. I knew that I shouldn't, but I quickly stuffed it into my mouth in the hopes that mum wouldn't see me breaking the diet while she was distracted by the other people in the living room. Turns out that hoping didn't do much good as my tongue quickly turned purple and elongated to four feet long, gaining the attention of my mother. With my parents freaking out and the wizard trying to fix it, confusion ran rampant and it took a while to get my tongue back to normal.

Apologizing profusely, the wizard took to the flames and I cried as my mum tried to comfort me. It took me a while to get over the trauma that was incurred via that incident. Luckily, I had two weeks left till my next school year at Smeltings.

With Harry gone, the house quieted down and life quickly returned to normal.


	5. The Fifth Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I left out a lot of the action but it seems like Dudley was pretty out of it for most of what was happening with Harry.

Fresh out of my fourth year at school, my summer was looking to be quite different than the previous four. I had recently won the title of Junior Inter-School Boxing Champion of the South East and it made me even more popular. My friends from childhood became my gang and we hung out every day doing pretty much whatever we wanted. That was also the summer that everything changed. One day, in particular, stands out in my memory…but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

On this particular day, I was at my friend Piers's house. I specifically recall telling my mum that I was going over for tea. She was incredibly naïve when I was a child. I passed that day by harassing a young kid named Mark Evans. He said something to me and he had to be made example of.

After establishing my superiority to my friends, we were walking around the neighborhood when I happened to spot Harry at the park. Quickly maneuvering so that I was facing him, I heckled my friends about our latest mischief. This caused them to turn away from my cousin and we kept on walking. See, I didn't want to be forced to stand up to the one person that I was afraid of. There was only one person I knew who had something in his arsenal that was foreign to me. Hitting, I understood. Magic, I did not. Later that night, I happened upon Harry again. Luckily, that time I was alone.

Harry started taunting me about my friends. I clenched my teeth and tried to ignore him. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I responded in kind, verbally fighting for dominance in the conversation. I clearly hit a nerve when I touched on some guy named Cedric. I made him so angry that he pointed his wand at me. Petrified, I yelled at him to put it away. When he didn't listen, I yelled at him again. I was about to hit him but a strange sensation came over me as if I had been doused in icy water. The lights went out in the street and the area was plunged into darkness. I started having a panic attack. I blamed Harry and threatened to hit him, threatened to tell my dad about his magic use. I couldn't think straight…and then the memories started.

_The giant waving his wand and giving me a pig tail, Harry practicing his magic words on me, the owl swooping in and dropping a letter in the house._

I vaguely heard Harry shouting something at me but I was too wrapped up in my memories. Everything that had to do with magic was flashing before my eyes.

_Aunt Marge inflating and floating away, the four wizards showing up in the fireplace, the fireplace exploding, my tongue expanding to four feet long._

At that point, I collapsed on the ground, the cold pressing in on me from all sides. Harry screamed something in another language and the cold started to back off. Shivering feverously, I started whimpering. Locked in the cycle of my most horrifying memories, I somehow made my way home.

Next thing I remember, I was sitting on the couch and my mum's voice was coming through in increments. I heard her say "who" and I pointed to the only person in the room who could answer and tried to say, "Ask him". It came out as "him" and my parents immediately rounded on my cousin to figure out what he had done to me. Every time I tried to clarify, it seemed to make my dad seethe even more. I kept bollixing it up, so I just gave up trying and concentrated on not throwing up my dinner – unsuccessfully, I might add.

Finally, I had enough of the confusion. I sat up and tried to explain myself. I tried to voice the feeling the cold gave me. I couldn't think of sufficient words to make clear the horror that affected me. Harry put the words to it well. I truly felt as if I'd "never be happy again." I fell into my memories once more.

I was shaken out of my stupor when my dad shouted at full volume. I jumped and tuned back into the discussion. It seems that my attention returned just in time because as I came to, an owl flew through the open window and gave a note to mum. It smoked and then screamed "Remember my last, Petunia." I stared at my mum, horror-struck that she had something to do with the current situation. With the echoes of the note ringing in my ears, it was decided that Harry wouldn't be kicked out of our house and he would have to stay until someone came to get him.

Two days later, mum received a letter stating that she had won All-England Best-Kept Suburban Lawn Competition. We decided to go on a road trip and leave Harry at home locked in his room. We drove all the way to the prize-giving only to discover that there was no such contest and we had been tricked. We drove back to the house to find Harry gone. Though I was slightly concerned, I couldn't help but be glad that dad and mum had no one left in the house to fight about.

With Harry out of the way, things settled down and I went back to hanging out with my friends throughout the rest of the summer. Though my friends couldn't tell, I was thinking about things a lot more…about how Harry had saved me from the cold. I started to wonder how I got home, since I couldn't recollect anything about the night other than the cold and the memories. I reached the conclusion that Harry must have dragged me home somehow. I also realized that I never thanked him for saving me. I simply made the situation worse by pointing to him and confusing my parents. I felt bad, but there was nothing I could do about it. And so, life went on.


	6. The Sixth Summer

I spent the next school year worried about what the summer would bring. Would Harry hate me since I didn't stick up for him after the cold monsters attacked me? Would he have gotten in trouble with his world? All these questions were burning in my gut when I got home and realized that I was back earlier than Harry. With the anticipation smoldering, I asked dad if I could go with him to pick up Harry at Kings Cross. He decided that we should all go, so we packed up and headed out together. I felt so out of place standing at the station amongst all the wizards and parents. Finally, I spotted Harry and a group of teens heading towards an odd group. I watched them converse and then the red-headed man who had blown up our fireplace led the ensemble over to us. Out of my league, I shrank back but stood my ground against the large crowd.

The scarred man in the hat led the discussion as they threatened my father into treating Harry well. I definitely was impressed by his intimidation techniques. From one bully to another, that was truly impressive.

Anyways, we followed Harry out of Kings Cross and dad drove us all home in silence.

Harry and I didn't interact much that summer. He was only there for two weeks and I was trying to keep my distance. I had dropped my old friends and started to turn over a new leaf in my life; one in which I wasn't a bully of those who couldn't stand up to me. I wouldn't say that I was immediately the nicest person on the block, but I wasn't the meanest any longer. That role was reserved for my father.

Only two weeks into summer break and late one night, a strange man in what appeared-to-be a long black dress showed up on our porch. My parents being rendered speechless by such an obvious display of peculiarity, this man (who called himself Dumbledore) invited himself in and made himself comfortable. My family sat down on the sofa while Harry ran roughshod around his bedroom trying to gather all his belongings. Mr. Dumbledore talked to my parents about Harry, me, and how Harry was supposed to be raised versus how he was actually raised. Much of the conversation went over my head, but something already filled that spot. Mr. Dumbledore had used his magic wand to make a cup bang on the top of my head. As its banging increased in frequency, we got more and more angry to the point where my dad fell into default and started screaming. I frowned and watched as Harry was swept away with all his things. The rest of the summer was quite boring without him.


	7. The Seventh Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a minor epilogue at the end. It's basically how I see Dudley ending his "memoir".

Harry came back from his sixth year at Hogwarts a changed person. There weren't any more smiles on his face; his eyes had become darker…like they had seen things that were unmentionable. He seemed constantly distracted and would frequently daze off into space and get this distant look on his face. I actually heard him counting once. I asked him if he needed to talk, but I think he was so concentrated on his task that he didn't hear me. He stuck to his room a lot.

One day while I was taking a break from packing, I walked past his room and heard bangs and swearing coming from behind his closed door. Deciding to do something nice for him for the first time, I went and made a cup of soothing tea. I didn't know whether I should knock on the door or not, considering we had never had a decent conversation in our lives, so instead I just left it on the floor outside the door and went back to packing up my belongings.

I took one of my bags downstairs to put by the front door and walked in on a repeat of a conversation that my father and Harry had had every day over the course of the last two weeks. My dad kept changing his mind about whether or not we were going into hiding. He chose to ignore different details every time this argument came around, claiming ignorance when he already knew the answer. Apparently, Harry finally had enough because he started arguing back at him instead of treating him like a precocious toddler. Reminding him about the dementors brought my dad to his senses. I saw him look at me. Harry threw out that the dementors were multiplying and were going to come after us after he left. I gulped and said, "Dad – I'm going with these Order people." I hurried back to my room to finish packing.

When the doorbell rang, I came downstairs with the last of my bags. I watched as a little man with a squeaky voice explained what our plan was and explain to Harry that there had been a change in his plan. I was confused. I had thought the entire point of going into hiding was that Harry was coming with us so that he wouldn't be murdered by the raging psychopath that killed his parents. With the change of plans not clearly laid out in front of me, I mumbled, "I don't understand." Why was I the only person who cared that they had no idea where Harry was off to? My dad kept trying to rush me out of the door while my mum kept looking at me like I belonged in the loony bin. I dug my heels into the ground and asked again, "where's he going to go?" Mum and dad looked lost.

Harry started to do damage control with the wizards who were escorting us to our hiding place. I finally got to express what I had been waiting two summers to say to Harry, "I don't think you're a waste of space…you saved my life." Mum started crying and ran forward to hug me. I took it like a man and looked over her shoulder at Harry. He was talking calmly to the woman. Dad gathered mum and I and started ushering us out the door once more. I figured it was then or never. I wriggled out of my mum's arms, walked back to Harry, and stuck out my hand.

Shaking hands with Harry Potter made my life seem infinitesimal. I could see it in his eyes; he had a destiny far greater than my own. Nodding my head, I turned and walked out of my childhood home.

I never saw Harry after that. I can only assume he went on to lead a happy and joyous life. I hope he fulfilled his destiny and I hope he's happily married and that he treats his kids with a kindness that my family never showed him. I hope that if he ever gets around to reading this memoir, he comes to understand how much I appreciate all he did for my family. I wrote this to wish him all the best in a life that I did everything in my power as a child to take away. So on that note, I'm sorry Harry…and all that's left to be said is that I pray that all is well.


End file.
